Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2009Review

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Like buckshot to the face.

By Avi Burk

Tromping out into the woods with a high-powered rifle or two, an equally high-powered hand-cannon, some bait, bear collars, tranquilizer darts and scent cover, and then waiting for a majestic deer to trot out into a beautiful green meadow so you can shoot it in the head isn't much of a sport -- it's more like a massacre. However, introduce a glut of blood-thirsty predators to the mix, each hunting the hunter singlemindedly as he scrambles to bag his trophy kill and escape in one piece, and you're getting a lot closer to a level playing field.

That's the premise in Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2009. You play Flint Abrahams, hunter extraordinaire, as he adventures around the world tracking and tagging some of the wild's most dangerous animals. However, Flint's mystique as one of the best hunters on Earth waffles throughout the story, as it seems something goes drastically wrong everyplace he shows up, and it usually doesn't take long for things to turn ugly.

Lion 1 - Flint Abrahams 0.

Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2009 plays more like an adventure game than a traditional hunting title. You'll spend most of your time traversing wilderness maps in search of prey that, once you've entered the appropriate area of the map, is extremely easy to spot. It's even easier to spot your prey if you make use of the "Hunter's Sense" mode (you can enter into it at any time by clicking down on the left analog stick and has no time limit attached or maximum uses) which allows you to view the world in black and white, and highlights any creatures or interest points in your field of vision. By and large, there's no need to carefully bait your prey and lure it out for a killing shot -- you'll simply wander around the game's environments blasting whatever crosses your path.

Also, each of the stages in "Career" mode is timed, which forces your hand to adopt a run-n-gun approach and takes the decision of whether or not to make an attempt to hunt patiently and wait out that perfect shot out of your hands.

The game's prologue is set in Russia, where you're tasked with taking down a red deer, which conveniently walks right out in front of you at the start of the level -- no need to take a single step in any direction or to use your scope to zoom in for that perfect shot. Immediately after you shoot your first deer, a cutscene starts up in which a bear appears out of nowhere and charges your hunting partner, injuring him badly and triggering the game's "Hand-to-Claw Combat" mode. Yeah, you guessed it, you get to go mano-a-mano against a brown bear. However, there isn't actually much to do once you're squared off against said big nasty, just a couple of simple controller prompts to follow (on the 360 you'll press buttons, on the PS3 you'll tilt your SixAxis controller in the directions indicated) and the bear scampers off.

Although the adventures you'll undertake in Career mode definitely get more involved (and convoluted) as you advance through the game, the basic mechanics remain the same and, as you rack up kill after kill, you'll probably find that putting a bullet into each lion, tiger, hyena, bear or buffalo's brainpan feels less rewarding each time you squeeze the trigger. Kill shots don't trigger any special animations either. Each time you plug an animal it will simply keel over and die, then vanish from the terrain. Simply put, plugging your prey gets old really fast.

Somebody check the expiration date on this Grey Wolf.

Hand-to-Claw Combat adds a cool wrinkle to the game, but the folks at Activision didn't take it far enough. There is no way for a player to trigger Hand-to-Claw Combat. The game's AI makes that decision for you. And there doesn't seem to be any particular rhyme or reason to when the game will trigger the combat mode either, with the one exception being certain points in the adventure when it's scripted that a beast will attack at a certain point and engage you at melee range.

At points, packs of hyenas will swarm you and attack and the Hand-to-Claw Combat will trigger automatically, allowing you to beat the hyenas down with the butt of your rifle and your hunting knife. But at other points in the game you'll be faced with an identical situation and Hand-to-Claw Combat won't be engaged, so you'll be forced to shoot down the charging scavengers.

Cabela's Dangerous Hunts 2009 does offer you another cool power to use in those situations when you're outnumbered by quick, agile foes hell-bent on making a meal of you. The "Adrenaline Boost" ability (which can be used by clicking down on the right analog stick) brings the action around you to a screeching halt, Matrix-style. This allows you to pinpoint vital spots on your would-be killers and gun them down before any of them has a chance to take another step. Although the ability to freeze time and blast every nearby enemy in the blink of an eye adds an exciting element to first-person shooters, it feels anti-climactic when you're the only one packing heat.